Fifth Season Ch.17-21

 The seventeenth chapter opens on the first section containing Damaya's perspective in six chapters, detailing the end of her first year at the Fulcrum. After exposing the cruelty of her bullies, and of her other fellow students, she has been characterized as a loner and been further isolated from other students. Her control is increasing, however, and she is told that she will be able to take her first ring test soon. After spending some time in the abandoned structures, she meets a girl she hasn't seen before. The girl says she is from the leadership class and wants to find a secret at Fulcrum's center, where they both find an empty depression in the floor with spikes sticking out of it. They are caught and questioned separately, but the leadership girl gets off due to her position. The guardian questioning Damaya is seemingly "malfunctioning", and before it can kill her Schaff comes in and brutally kills the guardian in front of Damaya. Schaff chides her for being a troublemaker, and says that she must do her first ring test to prove that she is worth the Fulcrum's resources. Before leaving for the test, Damaya tells Schaff that she wants her rogga name to be Syenite. Following this, we open up to Essun who has found a commune of orogenes and stone-eaters leaving in an abandoned underground mine. Hoa is disturbed by much of the crystalline architecture, but Essun is unsure why. The leader of the comm says, oddly enough, that the complex structures were made using a precision orogeny she thought impossible and that the navigational systems used to traverse the mine were also powered by orogeny. Essun asks the leader if she can leave, and they do not answer, much to the unsettling of Essun. Back to Syenite, after her and Alabaster destroyed a seaside town, they surmise that they are assumed dead by the Fulcrum. Both of their guardian connections have been cut off when their orogeny was surpressed, and they find themselves in an island community. They find out that the islands have survived the seasons because instead of killing their orogenes, they are led by them. At a village meeting, a non-Fulcrum (feral) rogga speaks, and both Alabaster and Syenite are attracted to them. Syenite offers to bring him to Alabaster and Alabaster agrees, remarking how long it has been since he had a lover he also wanted. The end of this chapter sees Syenite realizing she is pregnant and contemplating giving her child to the village, which is in need of orogenes. An interlude interrupts the flow of the narrative, reminding us of the other factions outside orogenes and the Fulcrum; stone-eaters, the Guardians, and Father Earth even. The narrator tells us that as orogenes and stills rested, these faction grew in power. We open back up two years later, and Syenite and Alabaster have become integrated in this island community. Syenite wishes to go with the raiding parties to get supplies for the village but she is denied, initially. After much convincing, the leader Innon allows her to accompany the party. After using her powers to help the raid, she asks to be taken to the seaside village. Upon arrival, she realizes the gravity of tectonic destruction that this landscape has fallen to. She tries to calm the earth, but realizes that this action has created tidal waves. Alabaster quells them easily, which shocks Syenite at a further expression of Alabaster sheer power. As the ship leaves, Syenite notices a person on the volcanic landscape. She quickly realizes that the fulcrum would have sent a Guardian scout to watch for the orogenes who made the mess to come and fix it, and that the person she sees is wearing a burgundy robe. The final chapter in this section has us returned to the mining comm with Essun, who confronts the third member of their walking trio Tonkee. She asserts that Tonkee is the leadership girl from the Fulcrum, confirming that all three perspectives across the novel are the same woman at different moments in her life. Tonkee confirms this, further saying that they have been following Essun for some time now. They relay their deductions regarding that depression, realizing that that socket is where the obelisks were created. Furthermore that these obelisks form relationships with some orogenes, and that one likely held an orbit synchronous with Essun's location in her old comm. Her other friend from her old comm, Lerna, is also present at the underground. She learns that her daughter is not there but that she will find her eventually. Hoa confimrs to Essun that he is a stone eater, and that he stuck around and treated her kindly because he likes her. Hoa unexpectedly says that Alabaster is here, dying, and wants to speak with Essun.

I found this section incredibly interesting, as it broadened the horizon for the kinds of communities possible in the Stillness. Further, it heightened the narrative by presenting how it is the same person at different moments in her life. The distinctive perspectives really speak to how our past-selves are different people, essentially.

Is Tonkee implied to be transgender in this section? Or am I reading that incorrectly?